Medicare policy might spur obesity research :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: Medicare policy might spur obesity research

Posted by admin on Monday, July 19, 2004 - 01:16 AM

The new policy announced by the federal government last week that enables Medicare to consider paying for obesity treatments might transform the weight-loss field by providing, for the first time, reliable data on methods for losing weight.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced Thursday that Medicare was abandoning a long-held policy that said obesity was not a disease, opening the way for the government to pay for a whole range of possible treatments, from surgery and diets to psychotherapy. But the government also said that to be eligible for coverage, treatments must be proved effective. And to determine whether an obesity treatment works, Medicare says it could end up paying for large studies of the treatments’ effectiveness. “I could see us using that here,” said Dr. Mark McClellan, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That, obesity experts said, could finally put hard data behind a notoriously fuzzy field and perhaps help millions of overweight Americans decide what to do. The new Medicare policy appeared not as a positive statement but rather as a deletion in the Medicare Coverage Issues Manual. Gone was the phrase, “obesity itself cannot be considered an illness,” and gone was the implication that coverage would be denied for any treatments intended to treat obesity alone. Until now, Medicare has paid for weight-loss surgery, for example, only if it was intended to treat a condition such as diabetes that arose from obesity. McClellan said he was expecting a deluge of requests that Medicare pay for treatments such as surgery, diets, behavioral therapy and exercise therapy. The agency does not pay for drug treatments. An estimated 18 percent of the Medicare population meets the official definition of obese — a body mass index above 30, as would occur, for example, in a woman who was 5 feet 5 inches and weighed more than 180 pounds or a 6-foot man weighing more than 221 pounds. With weight-loss surgery costing $30,000 to $40,000 if there are no complications, the cost to Medicare of obesity treatments could be astronomical. But that depends on whether the agency decides that obesity treatments are effective. And that, in turn, depends on what constitutes effectiveness. “We do need to get input,” on those questions, McClellan said. Medicare is convening an advisory committee this fall “to help us think through these issues,” he said.

· 90 Reads ·